This research concerns the processes by which people evaluate and make decisions involving complex outcomes having two or more salient dimensions. The first aim is to identify the character of dimensional weights that best account for evaluations and decisions among complex outcomes. Alternative measurement procedures have generally produced weights that are qualitatively distinct. The current study pursues the possibility that the various assessment approaches reflect aspects of the decision situation that have not been differentiated heretofore. Those aspects of the situation comprise major components of the decision making model proposed and tested. The specific issue and the model as a whole are examined primarily through a quasi-field experiment in which subjects' judgments and values for the dimensions of real life options are measured before and after a decision is made and the consequences experienced. The longitudinal approach is necessary not only to test the static features of the model but its predictions about changes in dimensional judgments over time. This investigation makes another distinction that has rarely been recognized in descriptive decision making research, the difference between choice and construction decisions. A construction decision situation is one in which the subject is given the opportunity to generate the complex outcome that is most satisfactory to him rather than makes a choice among a given set of alternatives. Primarily through interactive problem solving tasks played on a computer, descriptions of the procedures subjects employ in making construction decisions are developed. Finally, the efficacy of decision aids predicated on the proposed model and empirical results gathered to date is tested. The tests are conducted through a realization of those aids in procedures for counseling college students about course selection and time budgeting.